Dedication

To my parents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WRITING A FIRST novel sometimes feels like arbitrarily creating a plot in a vacuum. That’s why it’s crucial to have a private fan base to cheer the book along and a direct line to oracles you can pepper with research questions. I have been blessed with both in my work on The Corpse Flower.

My biggest thanks go to my parents, Jette Aagaard and Per Anders Jensen, for cheering me along and for just basically being the best parents in the world. To my brother, Anders Aagaard Jensen, for introducing me to the thriller and mystery genre way back at the dawn of time and for helping with the final touches on the first draft.

To my friend and partner in crime, author Katrine Engberg: thank you—for everything!

My heartfelt thanks to police sergeant Jesper Arff Rimmen, and to medical examiner and professor of forensic medicine Hans Petter Hougen. Thank you to army psychologist Mette Arff Rimmen and to resident doctor Liv Andrés-Jensen. Thanks to a “murder mystery heroine’s aging uncle,” journalist Jon Kaldan, for generously loaning me the family name.

A huge thank-you to my brilliant publisher in the U.S., Crooked Lane Books, and to my superstar agent at Nordin Agency, Anna Frankl.

Last but most importantly: thank you to my children, Vega and Castor. The sun rises and sets with you.

CHAPTER

1

ANNA REGULARLY DREAMED about killing him. About creeping up on him and swiftly running the blade across his throat. That was why, on this particular morning, she didn’t sit up in bed with a jolt but calmly blinked as she woke from yet another dream that left a kaleidoscope of violent images on the inside of her eyelids and filled her with excitement.

Is it over?

She lay still in the darkness as reality sunk in.

She checked the clock on the tiled floor next to her bed: 5:37 AM. It was the longest she had slept since renting the house.

A dog’s barking echoed through the cloisters of the old monastery on the neighboring street. Two barks followed by a short, suppressed howl, then total silence. Anna raised herself up on her elbows and listened. She was about to lie down again when she heard a spluttering car approaching slowly.

She got out of bed and quickly made her way to one of the bedroom’s two windows. A wave of unease washed over her. She opened one of the faded green shutters slightly, sending a ray of morning sun through the room in a narrow beam, and looked down into the street two floors below her. Apart from a cat waving its tail languidly on the wall of the overgrown courtyard garden of the building opposite, Rue des Trois Chapons lay deserted.

Anna scanned the houses.